Peter Jackson committed many sins against Tolkien. None worse than his butchery of Aragorn.

The books show us a KING who knows exactly who he is.

The films gave us a whimpering man questioning his birthright.

One commands respect. The other begs for validation. (thread) 🧵 Book Aragorn has no character arc.

This was intentional.

From the moment we meet Strider at the Prancing Pony to his coronation, he knows who he is.

The story gradually reveals his greatness to others, not to himself. Aragorn is a constant anchor for other characters to grasp.

8 ways to make your wife despise you.

1. Always ask for permission

Join the gym. Plan a night with friends. Invite people over. Your wife is not your mom. If you always ask permission, you're asking her to be a husband.

Being considerate is not the same as asking permission. 2. Overshare

Don't gossip like a woman to your wife.

Don't vomit out your feelings at every opportunity.

Don't burden her with every little anxiety and fear. Don't make a habit of crying at the drop of a hat.

Ask for counsel. Ask for help. Don't ask for an emotional crutch.

11 truths every man must hear before he becomes a father.

1. You will let your children down.

You are not perfect. You will never "do the best you can."

It's not ok that you let them down, but it's inevitable. Repent, apologize, and do better. An example every child needs. 2. Your words are more powerful than you realize.

Your words have the power of life and death. They will live in your children's bones for their entire lives. How you speak to them will be how they speak to themselves.

Keep your promises. Control your temper. Measure each word.

Disney's The Little Mermaid is a story about a father who is punished until he learns to give his spoiled, naive 16-year-old daughter everything she wants.

But the actual fairy tale is more interesting. In the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, the youngest mermaid still has a desire to live a human life on the earth. What stirs this desire, however, are tales of church spires, sunsets, green hills, and more.

She does see a handsome prince, but her longing goes beyond infatuation.

Modern fatherhood has been corrupted by a noble-sounding lie that will destroy your family: Everyone is equal and you are obligated to treat everyone equally.

Your children have a claim on your time and resources that no other child has.

This isn't bigotry.

It's wisdom. 🧵 Your household is the ONE place your children should feel special. You are THEIR father and no one else's.

Society pushes you to flatten these relationships in the name of equality.

Reject this.

A wise man knows the hierarchy of obligation.

What if your words could shape your family 200 years from now?

What was this ancient vow that outlasted kingdoms?

The zeal which made people refuse wine from a prophet?
🧵 In Jeremiah 35, the prophet offers wine to a group called the Rechabites. They refuse, saying their ancestor Jonadab commanded them never to drink wine, build houses, or plant vineyards.

For two centuries, they kept these austere commands.

We're drugging an entire generation of boys for the crime of being boys.

I was nearly one of the casualties.

Couldn't sit still. Disruptive. Knees bouncing constantly. Tapping my pencil or making noises.

Doctors diagnosed me with ADD and wanted to medicate me.

🧵 (thread) I'll forever be thankful for my mother, who reeled back in horror at the thought.

No medication for me. We'd find another way.

Eventually, we discovered I was just bored. Give me a challenge, and I'd focus for hours. Sometimes, I wouldn't even move.

Being a man means taking responsibility and killing excuses before they rot and fester.

In our age, victimhood is currency. Power can be gained from the pity you extract from others.

But taking responsibility is a superpower when everyone else is blaming others. 🧵 Some men get *angry* when told they don't have to be perpetual victims.

They don't want answers. They want to vent. They want pity. They want to signal to other miserable people that they're miserable, too.

The idea of "responsibility" threatens their identity.

I love homeschooling. It puts parents back in charge of shaping their child's mind and gives your household a deeper mission.

But there are pitfalls. Here are the 9 biggest mistakes homeschooling parents make, especially new homeschooling parents.

And how to avoid them: 👇 MISTAKE #1: Standards too HIGH

Don't make your 4-year-old sit still for 3 hours doing worksheets. You'll create needless conflict and teach them to hate learning.

Your kindergartner doesn't need a 6-hour school day. They need play and short bursts of focused attention.

"But how will they learn to socialize with other kids?"

This is the number 1 objection to homeschooling that always comes up.

Let's talk about what government school "socialization" ACTUALLY looks like vs. reality. 🧵 Government school socialization:

- Sit silently with same-age peers for 6+ hours
- Ask permission to use the bathroom
- Speak only when allowed
- Endure highest statistical chance of physical violence
- Get in trouble for talking to others

That counts as "social" for prison.

Boys and girls thrive in different educational environments. Homeschooling is ideal for your daughters—potentially through high school.

But your sons? Eventually, they might need something else. Maybe even the battles that come naturally with public school... For daughters, homeschooling creates a nurturing, domestic environment. They can flourish under maternal guidance, developing at their own pace, protected from the indoctrination machine of public education that seeks to corrupt them.

Patriarchy was never the problem. The rejection of "father rule" is why we're drowning in laws, surveillance, and state control.

A healthy, robust, accountable patriarchy protected our freedoms more than it restricted them. It protected women more than it oppressed them. 👇 When fathers are removed from their role as protectors and the authority that comes with that responsibility, people don't become "free."

They become wards of the state.

And the state doesn't love you. It only knows how to punish.

Here is the terrifying truth about homeschooling:

You are 100% responsible. No scapegoats. No luxury of blaming other teachers for not doing their jobs.

Zero excuses. Just you.

And there's more bad news. Parents who choose homeschooling aren't escaping educational problems. They're trading them for a mirror that reflects their own flaws.

Your kids' biggest educational obstacle might be staring back at you in the bathroom mirror each morning

Taking responsibility in an effeminate age like ours is a superpower.

Some people don't know what "taking responsibility" means, however, because they never had a father or anyone else who loved them enough to teach them.

So here is how to take responsibility. 🧵 1. Remember that you are not a helpless, incompetent person.

Things don’t just happen to you while you stare blank-eyed with your mouth open, using all of your brain power to remember how to breathe.

You have agency.

Daniel Everett is a celebrated linguist who started off as a missionary but eventually abandoned his Christian faith.

Why?

He realized that the Gospel would ruin the cultures he ministered to, leading to his growing doubt about Christianity.

But what culture would it ruin? 🧵 Everett was afraid his work would ruin the Pirahã's concept of truth and how it affected their language.

This same tribe forced alcohol down an infant's throat to kill it, an infant that Everett and his wife were attempting to nurse back to health. That was the Pirahã’s truth.

What happens when a man gives another man a hug, tears in his eyes? Often, someone points and snickers and says, "What are you, gay?"

Open homosexuality has killed male friendship. It has tainted all signs of true affection with something sexual and sinister.

How so? We have re-contextualized all affection between men, past and present, in the context of our own lusts.

Because Shakespeare wrote passionate sonnets to a young man, he must have been gay, despite no evidence.

Because Lincoln shared a bed with his friend Joshua Speed and wrote personal letters to him that sound like love letters, Lincoln must have been gay.

Never mind that this was normal for both men and women in the past. In writing, they also used strong language when addressing each other.

A woman trying to be more like a man is only a danger to herself and those she loves.

But there is a type of feminine strength that is fearsome to behold.

11 ways to raise dangerous daughters.

1. Tell your daughters they are beautiful. If your daughters don’t think they are beautiful, it’s your fault. They should hear this truth from their father often.

Too many girls are crippled by insecurity, and an insecure girl will not grow up to be a dangerous woman.

Boys are knights in training.

A boy who is not becoming more dangerous will be unable to protect anything. Here are 11 ways to raise dangerous sons.

1. Don’t tell your sons to be careful. Tell them to pay attention.

Expect your boys to be wild and get hurt. Show them how to pay attention to others and to their surroundings. Don’t undercut their zeal. Hone it.

You should be more concerned if a son does *not* get himself into dangerous situations from time to time. Survival is important, but it is not the most important virtue.

Napoleon said the only way to become a great captain was to read and reread the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Adolphus, Turenne, Eugene, and Frederick.

But he left off one name. A general you've probably never heard of. A general greater than Napoleon himself.

🧵👇 Scipio Africanus was the Roman general who defeated Hannibal and set the stage for Rome's supremacy across the Mediterranean.

And he did it without being a dictator. He was always encumbered by the political machinery of a republic.

Oxford anthropologist J.D. Unwin studied 86 societies and civilizations to see why some collapse and others don't.

What did he find?

That sexual debauchery leads to the collapse of a civilization within 3 generations. (thread) 🧵 Unwin defined four categories of cultures. Each is differentiated in its pursuit of art, engineering, literature, agriculture, etc.

1. Dead - these cultures are only focused on the day-to-day needs of life. They don't care about higher questions and so do not progress.

2. Superstitious - these cultures develop beliefs that help them explain the natural world. This can be represented in the special treatment of the dead.

3. Deistic - characterized by belief in gods or a god. This requires more imagination and higher-order thinking

4. Rationalistic - characterized by rational thinking. This was the category with the most human flourishing.

Next, Unwin defined sexual ethics and restraint into two categories.

Edwin H. Friedman was a rabbi and family therapist. He wrote three books.

One was a book of fables.

One dealt with family processes and anxiety, extending the insight to congregations.

And his final book was about how to save Western Civilization from itself. The book is titled "A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix," and it's a must-read for every father and leader.

It will change the way you think about leadership. You'll think twice before adapting too quickly to immaturity and weakness.

Here are 12 lessons: